Where Have You Interned?
By Alice Hu
When you ask a college senior how many internships they’ve had, it isn’t abnormal for a student to say five or maybe even more. Many members of Generation Y are eager to learn about an industry they’re interested in before graduating college. At times there is a pressure to have an internship, especially during the last two years of college. For many students, summers are spent interning.
Internships are a way for you to try different jobs and to find the one you are most interested in pursuing. However, an internship can take many forms. You may be going on coffee runs, completing menial tasks and complaining about your internship to your friends over AIM. On the flip side, you could find that internship where you really make a difference in the company. You may help with the design of a new website or cold-call reporters to pitch a news story. Sometimes you’ll get a really good internship and sometimes you won’t.
When our parents were our age, the concept of an internship didn’t really exist. Summers were spent life guarding at the pool or waiting tables at a restaurant. Now there is a pressure to beef up your resume with internships and many employers expect you to have had previous internship experience before they even consider you for a full-time position. Generation Y-ers have a lot of stress to be the best they can be and to constantly stay ahead of the game.
Now, I’m not saying that everyone is internship crazy. There are still students who work at the local restaurant or at the summer camp they attended when they were younger. However you can’t ignore the growth of the internship industry in the last five years. If you type in “internships” into Google you can find an endless number of Web sites dedicated to helping students find an internship. Many colleges also require students to have internship experience before graduating. An internship is mutually beneficial. Students (hopefully) gain some experience and companies can see if they have the potential to be a full-time employee. Companies from across all industries are hiring interns and some have very rigorous and structured programs.
Lauren Berger, the founder of Intern Queen Inc., has created a business around internships. She is a self-proclaimed “Intern Queen.” During college, she completed 15 internships. Yeah, that’s right 15. It’s not a typo. Now, she travels the country speaking at various colleges and offers advice for students on the internship search process. Some parents are even paying thousands of dollars for their student to get a good internship. Not to mention, many students study abroad during college and many of those study abroad programs are internship programs. Generation Y is the first generation to be very serious about obtaining pre-professional experience. It shows that many of us are ambitious and eager to see how we can contribute and fit into the real world.
Internships are a great way to learn more about an industry and network with people who may help you land a job after graduation. Completing a couple internships is almost like shopping around for the right job. You wouldn’t want to buy a cell phone or a laptop before testing it out right? The same idea applies to a job. An internship is the way to figure out if that job and company culture is the right fit for you.
Image: Interns
I feel like I took a weird approach to internships — I did a lot of small internships, more of what I'd call freelancing (which I'm still doing, really), but I kept the same “real” internship throughout the last year and a half of college. I liked it so much, I just kept sticking around. I like that approach because not only did I make some really wonderful friends, but you really get to connect with the people you work with, and they get to know you well enough that when you call in favors for recommendations, they're not just the generic “hard working, organized, smart” type of letters.
Two thoughts:
1) If you're looking to find a great internship, check out http://internshipratings.com. It's “a resource to rate, research and compare internships in various industries across the United States,” and is a great way to see what's out there.
2) Apply to intern at Mullen. And do it quick—last year, there were over 700 applications for 20 spots. I'd argue with anyone that it's the best program out there. (http://bit.ly/ctqalT)
I really recommend doing internships at companies that have developed, thought-out internship programs. This means that you'll probably end up doing less administrative-type tasks, and instead get the great opportunity to dive head-first into a part of the company's day-to-day operations or projects.
I agree that it's better to intern for a company with a set-program, but you can sometimes find yourself doing bigger tasks when their isn't a set program. It can turn into more of an entry-level type of environment for you once you prove yourself. That's where the real “real world experience” comes in.
That's true. I'm actually going to be a little hypocritical and say I'm doing an internship this summer at Box.net, a web start-up in San Francisco. They have about 60 employees, and I'll be working almost directly under the VP of Marketing, which will be an invaluable experience. I'll pretty much be working on projects as a full-time employee for about two months.
When searching for an internship, one should definitely be cautious of what their role would be. It's a good idea to come up with a series of questions touching on this topic during the interview, as I believe an interview should really be a 2-way conversation and not just the interviewer only asking the interviewee questions.
Great tips everyone! Thanks for reading.
The idea of paying somebody to find an internship/for the privilege of interning strikes me as preposterous. I first encountered this phenomenon during my time in Brazil where young elites dish out thousands of reals to go to the US or Europe to work service jobs and learn a little English.
Since then I've run into companies like University of Dreams (http://bit.ly/9eCrG5 – Lauren Berger of Intern Queen Inc has an endorsement deal with them) which offer an internship placement program for $7k+. From the program descriptions, it seems like these unpaid internships are summer camps for the privileged; the difference is you can put this summer camp on your resume and then go on to compete with people who didn't buy their previous professional experience.
This riles me a little; if my parents could afford to give me $7k for a summer, I would flip it twice, give it back and put that on my resume. It reminds me of the whole admissions coaches and elite SAT prep phenomenon/debacle. I think these internships might provide some legitimate pre-professional experience to capable people who need it, but isn't this a little bizarre? Am I off base here?
Interesting NYT article on the subject: http://nyti.ms/aVOZol
Also, I always love to see enterprising young people creating a brand/business for themselves, and I don't mean to drag the “Intern Queen” down, but the simple fact of having had 15 internships seems like a thin claim to fame/expertise in itself. I'm really curious what the 15 internships were and haven't been able to find that info so far in my search.